CHICO — Award-winning writer Nick Flynn is making a rare Northern California appearance next month. Flynn will be giving a public reading from his acclaimed memoirs, "Another (expletive) Night In Suck City" and "The Ticking Is The Bomb" on Monday, Oct. 1 at Chico State University, Ayers Hall, Room 106 at 7:30 p.m.

He'll also be teaching a master class on creative writing for students at the Butte College Chico Center, on Tuesday, Oct. 2 (2321 Forest Avenue in Room 107 at 12:30 p.m).

Students can attend either of these events for free with ID. A $3 donation is recommended from the public attending the Oct. 1 reading. Butte Community College is sponsoring his appearances, organized by poet and English Professor Amy Antongiovanni.

Nick Flynn makes autobiographical writing an art form, set by his unwavering duty to record his humanity twisting through pain. In "Another (expletive) Night in Suck City," he pulls from his own life. Tragedy began early: mother committed suicide after reading one of his unfinished short stories, his absentee father remains outsized... until reality intercedes. Nick meets his father as a client at the homeless shelter that Nick works for. His father is an alcoholic con artist, raving and full of his own grandiosity. He is certainly not the self-proclaimed great American writer.

Broken by the age of 22, Nick Flynn must confront his lineage and all that it entails. It's Nick Flynn's first memoir and it won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, was shortlisted for France's Prix Femina and has been translated into 14 languages.

Professor Antongiovanni recalls, "When I first read Nick Flynn's book of poems, "Some Ether," I knew I was in the presence of a writer who is unafraid of taking the kind of emotional risks necessary to create great art. I was struck by the poems' painterly qualities: He knows just what images to include, and how much to leave out, which is a difficult balance to find."

She continues, "I then read his memoir, 'Another (expletive) Night in Suck City,' and again, was moved so deeply by the bare-bones honesty of his prose, the humility and respect he shows the characters in the book, (homeless people, his alcoholic father and his own younger self) and the care he takes unraveling his difficult story within a story."

His second memoir, "The Ticking Is The Bomb," further explores his unceasing demand for truth, this time for the sake of his soon-to-be-born daughter. In an effort to comprehend fatherhood in America's era of torture, Flynn sets a very high bar. He deconstructs his turbulent upbringing while interweaving testimony from the detainees of Abu Ghraib. Always touching the humanity, Flynn neither apologizes for nor excuses actions, only attempts to understand it.

In addition to his memoirs, Flynn has also published two books of poetry, "Some Ether" (2000) and "Blind Huber" (2002), and is the author of a play, "Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins" (2008).

"The fact that the author has three books currently listed as required reading in three different college-level classes in Chico underscores just how relevant and significant this author is," said Lyon's Book Store Giovanni Quezada.

Flynn has served as "field poet" on the documentary, "Darwin's Nightmare," and executive producer and artistic collaborator on the nationally released film, "Being Flynn," which is adapted from his book, "Another (expletive) Night In Suck City."